Alyssa Feigelson

Précis

March 21, 2021

Gregg Drinkwater’s article, “AIDS Was Our Earthquake: American Jewish Responses to the AIDS Crisis, 1985–92”, begins by establishing the religious and moral superiority surrounding the AIDS crisis. He gives a background on the origin of the discovery of AIDS, and chooses to focus on how the Jewish community went from being largely silent on the issue to actively providing help to those affected from a Jewish perspective. Drinkwater demonstrates how Jewish communities did not always conform to the common Christian sentiment that people with AIDS deserved their illness. He uses these responses as proof that the two rabbis who began the large-scale response in San Francisco, rabbis Kahn and Kirschner, were the turning point in the Jewish community’s views of the AIDS epidemic and the LGBT community as a whole.

            In proving that the Jewish response to AIDS was different from the beginning, Drinkwater introduces Rabbi Barry Freundel, an Orthodox man who was later arrested for watching women in a mikveh. Freundel argued that those living with AIDS were suffering from God’s anger, but even this arguably terrible man conceded that the most important thing to remember at this time was that as Jews, there was an obligation to “heal and prevent death wherever possible.”[1] This establishes the norm in Jewish communities, even in those that despised the gay community, to help the sick. From Freundel, Drinkwater moves on to describe Temple Emanu-El’s rabbi’s powerful Kol Nidre sermon, urging his congregation to have compassion. Then he introduces Rabbi Kahn of Congregaiton Sha’ar Zahav, who gave his first ever sermon on the AIDS crisis to his queer temple, emphasizing his rightful anger instead of a plea for compassion.

The article was really strongly written and had some very beautiful moments, especially when showing how Rabbi Kirschner decided to write about AIDS in his Kol Nidre sermon. Drinkwater describes how Kirschner recited the kaddish to a man dying of AIDS at the man’s request, and was so moved he wrote a sermon to be delivered the very next day. Relatedly, the quotes Drinkwater pulled from the sermons and from contemporary writings were very powerful and served to strengthen his argument. Most notably, the line from Rabbi Kahn’s sermon: “We cannot begin the new year until we come to terms with the old…Upon looking back, I must say, before God and this congregation, I am not prepared to forgive. Before I can forgive, I must give voice to anger.”[2] This touching phrasing is so relevant to the current time, when we find ourselves balancing rage and the need to keep moving forward.

Despite these strengths, the article was little long for my taste, and some of the key points got buried due to its length. The first half of the article was so gripping, by the second half it felt as if some of the significance had fallen away. The article could also have benefited from centering the Jewish people with AIDS—he does a good job of giving them a lot of focus, but I think the article could have been more interesting if we could have seen how those being marginalized reacted to the turning tides.

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[1] Freundel, quoted in Drinkwater, Gregg. “AIDS Was Our Earthquake: American Jewish Responses to the AIDS Crisis, 1985–92.” Jewish Social Studies 26, no. 1 (2020), 123

[2] Kahn, quoted in Drinkwater, 129